Eugene weekly., July 01, 2004, Page 9, Image 9

LANE COMMUNITY COLLEGE’S
had any concerns as to where he was,” Harris
said. Harris testified that he gave Magaña pos-
itive performance evaluations and praised him
for his knowledge of police work and for work-
ing a lot of hours.
Harris apparently did not regularly check
up on officers on the street. He said he relied on
their honesty. “It’s absolutely crucial for us to
be honest with each other.”
At one point, Magaña allegedly placed him-
self on “special assignment” with dispatchers so
he would have time to coerce sex from a female
drunk driver while on duty. Harris said he
would have known and authorized such a “spe-
cial assignment” but he appeared ignorant that
Magaña gave himself the assignment that night.
Fellow officers had questions about where
Magaña was while on duty, but apparently did
not report their concerns.
“There were times I would see Mr. Magaña
at the briefing and not see him until the end of
the shift,” testified officer Greg Reeves, who
worked an adjacent patrol sector to
Magaña.
Officer Jeff Glemser said he patrolled
Bethel with Magaña but now realizes, “I never
really knew where officer Magaña was.”
Officer Thompson said in 1999 he looked
for Magaña at a location he had reported by
radio but couldn’t find him. He said he found
Magaña a few blocks away entering a drug “flop
house” where one of his alleged victims lived.
A trainee officer, John Sharlow, noticed
Magaña was on his personal cell phone a lot
late at night when most people were asleep.
Magaña allegedly used the phone to call his sex
victims.
Yet More Questions
• Did Magaña have many more victims? The
jury was only asked to consider crimes against 11
victims. But McKee told an alleged victim last
year that he had 18 victims he was investigating,
according to a tape played at trial.
• Did Magaña also steal money? McKee testi-
fied that Magaña has not been charged with theft,
but he did begin investigating questions about his
finances. He said people contacted him with con-
cerns of how Magaña was able to afford a half mil-
lion dollar house, new cars and thousands of dol-
lars in new fitness equipment on his and his wife’s
relatively small salaries. There was also suspicious
evidence that Magaña had paid for several hun-
dred dollar cell phone bills and $3,000 to $10,000
in fitness equipment in cash. “I haven’t completed
that inquiry” into Magaña’s finances, McKee said.
• Magaña helped train several police officers
while he was allegedly also sexually abusing
women. It’s unclear if those officers will now
require retraining.
• David Montgomery prosecutes drug cases
for the district attorney and testified that he had to
dismiss many drug cases Magaña was involved in
after the allegations against the officer came to
light. “There was a cloud and it would be uncom-
fortable to go forward based on the allegations
against Mr. Magaña,” he said. It’s unclear if the
district attorney will also have to go back and retry
or dismiss existing drug convictions that were
based on Magaña’s testimony.
In the taped phone call to a victim last summer,
the woman told Det. McKee that she “was sur-
prised it’s taken this long” to catch Magaña.
McKee, noting allegations stretched back to
1997, replied, “I am too.”
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